The San Francisco One-Year MBA Programs You Need to Know
One-year MBA applicants already know which industry or area of concentration they want to pursue. They are MBA candidates who want to advance their current careers, rather than change them. Others chose the one-year route because it can be difficult to leave two years of work and salary. If you’re a prospective MBA in the San Francisco metro looking to make moves within your industry, we’ll show you what One-Year MBA options are out there for you.
Who Pursues One-Year MBA Programs?
According to U.S. News & World Report, accelerated MBA programs appeal to those who want to continue working in the same industry but want to move into a higher position; those who want to save time and money; and those who may want a faster return on investment for their MBA.
One-year MBAs condense what would be a semester’s worth of core business courses in a full-time program into only a few weeks. Most incoming students enter with a strong base of business knowledge. One-year programs typically do not feature a summer internship, which means that accelerated MBAs may not offer the same career opportunities that a full-time program does.
Popular One-Year MBA Programs
One-year programs have been popular in Europe for years, but have grown in popularity stateside over the past decade. Not all business schools offer a One-Year MBA, but a handful of top schools do, including:
- The Columbia Business School – Accelerated MBA Program
- The Kellogg School of Management – One-Year MBA Program
- The Johnson School (Cornell University) – Accelerated MBA
- The Goizueta Business School (Emory University) – Full-Time MBA, One-Year Experience
One-Year MBA Offerings in San Francisco
San Francisco is the cultural, commercial, financial, and educational epicenter of Northern California and Silicon Valley. Naturally, it is also home to some of the country’s premier business schools, like UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and Stanford University Graduate School of Business. However, those schools do not offer One-Year MBA programs.
Schools in the Bay Area that offer Accelerated MBA programs are:
- San Francisco State University College of Business
- Lucas Graduate School of Business – San Jose State University
Let’s take a closer look at these school’s One-Year MBA offerings.
San Francisco State University College of Business
San Francisco State’s full-time MBA degree is known as the Fast-Track MBA. The program features both afternoon and evening classes and can be completed in 12 months.
In order to graduate, students must fulfill a Professional Development Workshop series, eight foundation courses and ten advanced requirement courses. In the first semester of the program, students complete 15 units of core coursework, along with four workshops. After completing these requirements, students select 15 units of electives from nine possible areas of specialization, such as Accounting, Operations Research, Electronic Commerce, Finance, Information Systems, International Business, Management, Marketing, and Sustainable Business.
The program ends with a case study in Strategic Management, which evaluates strategy formulation, implementation, techniques and decision-making in the context of the economic, social, political and competitive global environment.
Tuition costs for the San Francisco State Fast-Track MBA program amount to $3,540 plus $270 per unit for part-time California residents and $5,546 plus $270 per unit for full time residents. For out of state and international students, part-time tuition is $3,540 plus $666 per unit while full-time tuition is $5,546 plus $666 per unit.
Lucas Graduate School of Business
Lucas Graduate School of Business at San Jose State offers an Early Career MBA Accelerated Track, designed for individuals who are willing to follow a very intense academic pace and wish to complete their MBA degree in 12 months. The fast-paced program is made up of 2-3 courses per session with 6-8 weeks of courses per class. The program is offered once a year starting in fall, and spans 12 months.
The Early Career MBA curriculum consists of 42 semester credit units containing 11 core courses and four electives. The core courses are often prerequisites to electives, such as Business Communications, Managing in the Global Economy, Developing and Managing People, Accounting Principles, Marketing Management, Law and Ethic, Managerial Decision Analysis, and Silicon Valley Experience.
Following core coursework, students must take a minimum of four classes (12 units) of elective coursework in the disciplines of: Accounting, Finance, Marketing, Organizational Development, Global Business Development, Entrepreneurship and Venture Development, Information Systems, and Operations Management. Students may also participate in an international semester in the summer term.
Tuition costs for the Accelerated MBA program is $25,072 for in-state residents and $41,704 for out-of-state residents.
Wharton, Stanford Top Forbes’ 2017 Business School Ranking
For the first time ever, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania topped the biennial Forbes list of the best business school’s in the United States.
Coming in second place on the Forbes 2017 rankings, revealed earlier today, was the Stanford Graduate School of Business, which was followed by Harvard Business School, Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, and Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business rounding out the top five.
Forbes‘ top 10 U.S. business schools (2017)
Rounding out the top 20 were some familiar MetroMBA favorites, such as Columbia Business School (6th), Chicago Booth (7th), MIT Sloan (8th), UC Berkeley Haas (9th), UCLA Anderson (15th), the McCombs School of Business UT-Austin (17th), and the Mays Business School at Texas A&M (20th).
Just making the final cut on Forbes’ newest list, which includes only 70 schools, was the Fox School of Business at Temple University (60th), Pepperdine’s Graziadio School of Business and Management (65th), Northeastern’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business (66th), the Kogod School of Business at American University (67th), and the Gabelli School of Business at Fordham University.
Method To The Madness
Nearly every major publication that reveals its own respective business school ranking list has its own principle methodology in which it follows. For instance, unlike Forbes, the Financial Times ranking system relies more on alumni survey responses for its final ranking. While Forbes does utilize surveys in its ranking, its primary focus is on how graduates fare on their return on investment.
In the ranking release, Forbes staff writer Kurt Badenhausen notes:
“Our ranking of business schools is based on the return on investment achieved by the class of 2012. We examined more than 100 schools and reached out to 17,500 alumni around the globe. We compared graduates’ earnings in their first five years out of business school to their opportunity cost (two years of forgone compensation, tuition and required fees) to arrive at a five-year MBA gain, which is the basis for the final rank. Schools whose alumni had response rates below 15 percent or a negative return on investment after five years were eliminated.”
In regards to Wharton topping the 2017 list, Badenhausen writes, “These days most Wharton MBA students head to finance or consulting jobs upon graduation (79 percent of the class of 2012), which traditionally are the most lucrative areas for MBAs. The concentration in these sectors pushed Wharton’s current total compensation for the class of 2012 to the highest of any school in the world at $225,000.”
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The exceptional cost of living around Stanford and shockingly low admissions rates (6 percent) contributed to the business school falling off its top spot from the prior year. Stanford GSB graduates, however, were given enormously valuable stock options after earning employment, with a median value of $380,000. Despite the astronomical figures, Stanford GSB grads still saw a dip of around $40,000 in total five-year compensation compared to the Class of 2010. Similarly, HBS grads saw a $28,000 five-year drop compared to the Class of 2010. Wharton 2012 grads, in contrast, gained $18,000 compared to two years prior.
In regards to employment, not much has changed since 2012. McKinsey and Co. was the top employer of the Wharton Class of 2012, hiring over 50 of the school’s 800-plus graduates. Alongside McKinsey were Bain, BCG, and Deloitte, which are still the school’s top employers. However, since then, Amazon has overtaken Goldman Sachs in the Wharton recruitment war.
Thomas Jueng, Seoul native and 2012 Wharton grad, tells Forbes, “Wharton was a great springboard to make a transition geographically and job position-wise with a strong brand name and network as well as providing practical knowledge.”
Read the entire Forbes list of the best U.S. business schools here.
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A Recommendation Revolution Is Underway in MBA Admissions: What You Need to Know
I’m busy, you’re busy, your boss is most definitely busy. Indeed, publications ranging from Men’s Health to the Atlantic, the Washington Post to Forbes are all reporting that “busyness“ has become the new status symbol for our times. Which is part of what makes asking someone to write you a letter of recommendation for business school so daunting. Now, try telling that person that you actually need five different letters for five different schools. Oy vey.
As uncomfortable a spot as it puts applicants in—it’s no better for recommenders. Even your most vociferous supporter is going to wonder what in the world she’s gotten herself into when she realizes that helping you in your pursuit of acceptance to business school means taking time away from work or play or family or whatever else to labor over leadership assessment grids, each a little different from the one before, and write 10 slightly different answers to 10 slightly different questions. Here’s hoping that your top-choice school doesn’t happen to be the last one she gets around to…
Good news. The graduate management education industry recognizes the strain that letters of recommendation put on applicants and recommenders alike and has been wrestling with ways to make the process easier for everyone involved. To this end, the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) established a committee made up of admissions representatives from dozens of leading business schools to brainstorm about ways to lessen the burden while still collecting the third-party assessments of candidates that are so critical to the MBA application process.
GMAC Pilots Common MBA Letter of Recommendation
As an outgrowth of that committee’s work, GMAC last year piloted a common MBA letter of recommendation (LOR) that schools can choose to incorporate into their applications to reduce the burden placed on applicants and recommenders alike.
“The Common Letter of Recommendation (LOR) effort is intended to save you and recommenders valuable time by providing a single set of recommendation questions for each participating school,” reads the GMAC website. “This allows your recommenders to use the same answers for multiple letter submissions, alleviating the workload of having to answer different questions for each school multiple times. You benefit because it makes the ask for several different letters to be written on your behalf much easier.”
Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management, NYU Stern School of Business, and Michigan’s Ross School of Business were among the first schools to pilot the Common LOR last year. In addition to a single set of open-ended essay questions, the pilot Common LOR also included a leadership assessment grid inviting recommenders to rate applicants on 16 “competencies and character traits” grouped into four main categories of achievement, influence, personal qualities and academic ability.
“At Johnson, we saw the Common LoR as a clear opportunity to improve the admissions process for candidates and their recommenders in a way that would also add value to our own assessment of applicants,” Judi Byers, Johnson executive director of admissions & financial aid, told Clear Admit. “A thorough and consistent review is important to us and the grid provides a straightforward base of insights that can be assessed and compared reliably while the accompanying letter adds meaningful detail and context,” she added.
Soojin Kwon, managing director of full-time MBA admissions and program at Ross, sees applicants and recommenders as the main beneficiaries of the Common LOR and is pleased that more schools are coming on board. “As more schools adopt it, applicants won’t have to feel like they’re burdening their recommender with completing multiple rec letters with different questions and ratings grids,” she told Clear Admit. “This year, more than a dozen of the top 20 schools are using it.”
Ross was also among the schools to first pilot the Common LOR last year, and Kwon served as part of the GMAC committee that helped craft it.
Common Questions Easy to Agree on, Common Leadership Grid Not
“What we found in using the Common LOR this year past year was that the questions gave us helpful insights into applicants, particularly on the important area of constructive feedback. The questions, however, were fairly similar to what we and other schools were using before, so it was easy for the AdCom to use it,” she notes.
Those questions are as follow:
- Please provide a brief description of your interaction with the applicant and, if applicable, the applicant’s role in your organization. (50 words)
- How does the performance of the applicant compare to that of other well-qualified individuals in similar roles? (E.g. what are the applicant’s principal strengths?) (500 words)
- Describe the most important piece of constructive feedback you have given the applicant. Please detail the circumstances and the applicant’s response. (500 words)
- Is there anything else we should know? (Optional)
“The rating grid was quite different from what we’d used in the past,” Kwon continued. “It was also the most difficult part for the GMAC advisory group to develop and get agreement upon. The group worked this past year to revise and simplify the grid so that AdComs could get more meaningful insights from it.”
This year, the 16 competencies and character traits from the original grid have been distilled to 12, with specific questions about analytical thinking and information seeking omitted. Johnson and Ross have both incorporated the revised leadership grid into the LOR distributed to applicants as part of their applications, as have most other schools that have this year decided to incorporate both the grid and open-ended essay question portions of the form. UT’s McCombs School of Business and Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, notably, still seem to feature the earlier version of the leadership grid in their application, the one that calls on recommenders to assesses applicants on 16 competencies and traits.
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Admissions Tip: Deadlines
Anyone who’s familiar with the MBA application process knows that August moves forward at an accelerated pace, and come September, entire weeks seem to disappear. To help this year’s Round One applicants avoid the classic time crunch, today’s blog post offers some basic advice on how to approach the Round One MBA deadlines at a reasonable pace.
Let’s start by taking a quick look at a handful of the earliest deadlines for the top MBA programs:
September 6: Harvard Business School
September 8: Cambridge / Judge
September 12: Duke / Fuqua
September 13: Yale SOM
September 15: London Business School
September 19: Stanford GSB, Penn / Wharton, Notre Dame / Mendoza (Early Deadline)
September 20: Northwestern / Kellogg, INSEAD
September 21: Chicago / Booth, Berkeley / Haas
September 25: MIT Sloan
September 29: Oxford / Saïd
For a full list of deadlines, check out Clear Admit’s post here.
Though some schools have yet to announce their deadlines (such as UMD Smith and UCI Merage, one can still get a sense of the lineup of R1 deadlines. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when creating your personal timeline.
Plan to be busy in August.
Yes, it can be tempting to work on one’s tan instead of one’s essays. However, many MBA applicants squander the month of August only to wake up in September and realize that they cannot make their target deadlines. If you are not bogged down by professional obligations in August, this makes for a great opportunity to devote time to working on your MBA applications in the evenings. The last weeks of summer can easily be split between résumé drafting, essay writing, recommendation coaching, GMAT prep, school research, and more.
Think carefully about the timing of the R1 MBA deadlines.
Looking at the deadlines above, it becomes clear that some deadlines may be easier to make than others. A candidate applying to Haas and London Business School could have a leisurely October when compared to someone targeting Haas, London Business School and NYU Stern (Oct. 15, 2017 Round 1 Deadline). Assuming about three weeks of research and writing for each school’s application, take a look at the deadlines and count backwards to determine a start date for each. It is entirely possible to meet back-to-back deadlines, such as Tepper and Darden, but doing so requires a well-planned schedule and consistent progress.
Consider taking some time off from work.
We realize that many MBA applicants work 70 hours per week and haven’t had a day off in months. For such applicants, a day or two out of the office can really do wonders for focus and organization. Applying to business school is a serious undertaking, and in the long term you won’t regret having given yourself enough time to prepare strong applications. Many successful candidates take a week off in early September to make the final push. It’s not a glamorous way to spend your vacation time, but an offer to attend a leading MBA program can make the sacrifice well worth it.
Get your recommenders on board early.
While some of the schools have not yet made their online applications and recommendation forms available, it’s a good idea to engage your recommenders early and inform them about the process and your timeline. Sit down with each recommender, perhaps over lunch or coffee. Present them with an outline of the deadlines and the process. It’s then a wise idea to meet again once the forms are available, and by that time many applicants are in a position to share their background materials (a résumé, career goals essays, etc.) to help their recommenders understand—and support—their message.
Happy planning!
This article has been edited and republished with permissions from Clear Admit.
